Latest / bit of a Rambler / 045 Dance Contest

Transcript

045 Dance Contest · bit of a Rambler

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Kai, and I am a bit
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Speaker 1: of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and tell stories,
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Speaker 1: and this one is a bit of a doozy. I
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Speaker 1: was in a dance contest. I was in an impromptu
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Speaker 1: dance contest, and the only dance contest I've ever been
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Speaker 1: in in my whole life, because I never learned how
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Speaker 1: to dance. I don't really know how to dance, but
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Speaker 1: everything clicked this one night and I was dancing, and
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Speaker 1: then a dance contest happened. And this story sounds unbelievable
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Speaker 1: and completely ridiculous, and I totally understand that, but this
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Speaker 1: happens to me, and it's one of the most insane
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Speaker 1: memories I have because it just doesn't seem real. It
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Speaker 1: didn't seem real when I was doing it, and it
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Speaker 1: doesn't seem real when I'm talking about it now. But
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Speaker 1: a hunch undred percent it happened, because if you remember
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Speaker 1: with the mountain, when I checked with my Chinese friends,
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Speaker 1: did the sun really come up in the middle of
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Speaker 1: the land instead of on the horizon? And they remembered
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Speaker 1: at how I did. I checked with my friends in
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Speaker 1: the following weeks to make sure the details I was
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Speaker 1: remembering about this night actually happened because we were drinking
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Speaker 1: and it was really late and it was so bizarre.
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Speaker 1: So let's dive right into this story, which I love
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Speaker 1: because I look really good in this story. So I
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Speaker 1: was dating someone at the time, and we were trying
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Speaker 1: to do different things together and we weren't really clicking
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Speaker 1: each time we went out. So all the teachers and
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Speaker 1: their girlfriends were going to go to the club. And
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Speaker 1: there's a district in Beijing where all the clubs are.
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Speaker 1: There are a few different neighborhoods with nightclub scenes, but
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Speaker 1: this is like the one in the center of Beijing
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Speaker 1: that had the reputation at the time that if you
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Speaker 1: were looking for loud music and cheap drinks and a
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Speaker 1: dance floor, this is the place you would go. It's
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Speaker 1: called Wudauco. The cover charge was ten or twenty qhy,
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Speaker 1: so two or three dollars. The drinks were also two dollars,
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Speaker 1: said most, and then you just stayed in there and
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Speaker 1: danced or hung out in the low lighting and internal
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Speaker 1: organ rattling bass jams. So I don't usually go to
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Speaker 1: these dance clubs because they're just too loud for me.
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Speaker 1: If they were a little quieter, and once there was
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Speaker 1: a quieter one, they were still playing all the music
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Speaker 1: and there were drinks, but it just wasn't so loud
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Speaker 1: that my ears hurt. It was fine anyway, everybody else
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Speaker 1: likes the loud clubs, So everybody decided that we were
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Speaker 1: going to Wudauco that night. So a little while after
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Speaker 1: school got out, and after we had a few beers,
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Speaker 1: we piled into a cab and headed on over there.
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Speaker 1: And my girlfriend seemed really excited, and now she would
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Speaker 1: think I was a fun human being. And I was
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Speaker 1: drunk enough that I didn't really care where we went.
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Speaker 1: There would be some food and there would be drinks there,
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Speaker 1: and I would survive the night, even if I was
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Speaker 1: pressured to dance, a concern of mine, And that's what happened.
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Speaker 1: I got to the club. It was like three for
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Speaker 1: one mohitos, and I started downing those and having some fun.
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Speaker 1: Now the music was too loud, but it was also
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Speaker 1: pretty fun music. So we all started dancing. And then
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Speaker 1: the girl I had brought asked me to teach her
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Speaker 1: the dance I was doing, because I had come up
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Speaker 1: with this routine that I was like, this will look
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Speaker 1: cool and I moved my feet in some pattern and
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Speaker 1: I guess it looked cool because she was like, hey,
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Speaker 1: that looks cool. Can you teach me how to do that?
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Speaker 1: And I had to like, yeah, I can do that.
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Speaker 1: I can actually teach you. So I taught her how
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Speaker 1: to do this I don't know routine that I was
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Speaker 1: doing with my feet. And then the other teachers noticed
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Speaker 1: that we were doing this like cool tandem dance now,
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Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, man, where did you learn that move?
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Speaker 1: Can you teach us those moves? I'm paraphrasing here, And
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Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, sure, let's do it. And then
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Speaker 1: we had a group of like eight people all doing
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Speaker 1: my made up dance that I guess everyone thought looked cool.
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Speaker 1: And it was like dance class, okay, foot in, turn,
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Speaker 1: spin around the end, and everybody was really into it though,
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Speaker 1: and we did look cool, and people were like taking
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Speaker 1: videos of us and whatnot. Now this dance was something
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Speaker 1: I just made up and with some mold nothing bullshit,
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Speaker 1: but I felt it in my legs and body. I
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Speaker 1: was like, this does look cool, Like this this routine
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Speaker 1: that I just came up with, just now, it does
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Speaker 1: look cool. You can just tell when you look like
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Speaker 1: a complete goober, or when you look like you know
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Speaker 1: what you're doing. And it definitely looked like this was
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Speaker 1: something that I had worked on and planned whatever, and
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Speaker 1: everyone dancing was having a good time and like having fun,
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Speaker 1: and a couple people in the crowds started to like
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Speaker 1: back away and like try and copy the moves we
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Speaker 1: were doing, and it turned into this like big thing,
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Speaker 1: and this is so crazy. It sounds like a musical,
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Speaker 1: but this is how it happened. So our routine started
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Speaker 1: infecting the crowd, but very it just started to get
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Speaker 1: outside of our immediate group that I was teaching. But
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Speaker 1: it's still like a group of expat Americans doing a
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Speaker 1: dance routine in the middle of a Chinese nightclub. It
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Speaker 1: really was very musical, okay, But then we're all dancing,
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Speaker 1: and I was like, I got to keep adding to
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Speaker 1: this routine because they expect me to like more. But
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Speaker 1: before I could, this Chinese guy walked out of the
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Speaker 1: crowd around us, who looked so much cooler than me,
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Speaker 1: Like I had a beer and duck stained T shirt
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Speaker 1: and ripped jeans, not cool ripped jeans, old ripped jean
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Speaker 1: although I think I was still wearing my chucks at
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Speaker 1: the time, and those are always cool, so I guess
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Speaker 1: with my red high tops I looked like a souped
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Speaker 1: up hobo. Anyway, this Chinese guy strides up and cocks
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Speaker 1: his head in what can only be described as a
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Speaker 1: dance confrontation. He had an aura about him, a dance aura,
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Speaker 1: and all the teachers noticed it, so they kind of
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Speaker 1: like moved away from me and stopped dancing. And I
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Speaker 1: turned around to face this guy, and, like I say,
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Speaker 1: he just moves right up and then just cox his
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Speaker 1: head real like stylish, turns it at me, arms crossed,
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Speaker 1: head back, chin up, and I'm like, oh, he wants
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Speaker 1: to dance contest me. I knew instantly what he was doing.
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Speaker 1: I understood that it was a challenge, and I thought
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Speaker 1: about how I had never danced before at all, and
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Speaker 1: how this thing I was doing was made up, and
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Speaker 1: how everything I knew about dancing was from movies and
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Speaker 1: I didn't even dance in front of the TV when
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Speaker 1: the movies were going on. I had just viewed dances
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Speaker 1: by people before. And this guy looked like he danced professionally,
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Speaker 1: like he had the whole outfit. He had the cap
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Speaker 1: on at five o'clock, so it's not quite backwards, it's
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Speaker 1: tilted on the side. He had sunglasses on, even though
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Speaker 1: there were like two lumens for the entire room already
7:36
Speaker 1: it was a dark room. He was wearing a necklace.
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Speaker 1: He had like a thin jacket that fit him like
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Speaker 1: a supermodel, like he just walked out of a magazine,
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Speaker 1: and like loose break dance pants on. He looked really cool.
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Speaker 1: He looked like some kind of dance robot ninja. And
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Speaker 1: he moved like that. He moved very deliberately. And I'm
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Speaker 1: standing there, as I mentioned, like a sooped up hobo,
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Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, this guy can clearly dance so
8:04
Speaker 1: well just from the way he walks, I can tell
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Speaker 1: he can dance. It would be so stupid to dance
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Speaker 1: against him, because he obviously knew what he was doing
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Speaker 1: and I did not, But I decided to do it anyway.
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Speaker 1: So he let me go first. He put his hands out,
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Speaker 1: took a couple steps back, and did that up nod
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Speaker 1: in this broad gesture like you first, and I was like, okay,
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Speaker 1: So I started with my dance that I had just
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Speaker 1: taught to my friends, and I just did the exact
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Speaker 1: same thing. And the crowd was like, yeah, that's cool.
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Speaker 1: That looked cool, and I was like, okay, I guess
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Speaker 1: it was kind of cool because they're clapping and cheering
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Speaker 1: for my move. And I just did that a few
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Speaker 1: times and then stepped back. But then he stepped forward
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Speaker 1: and did something way cooler with more kicks and spins,
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Speaker 1: and what he did looked real, and everybody was clapping
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Speaker 1: and cheering again, but not so much louder than when
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Speaker 1: I had went. It kind of seemed equal. Plus Robot
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Speaker 1: Ninja didn't look like super happy after he danced. He
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Speaker 1: looked like, oh, I could have done that better, Like
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Speaker 1: he looked a little pissed at himself. So I tried
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Speaker 1: to up my game and added like a new foot
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Speaker 1: weave at the end of the first foot weave, so
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Speaker 1: I it doubled my routine time. I don't even know
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Speaker 1: what it's called my sequence, and I just pretended like, yeah, man,
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Speaker 1: that's my next level. And I did this full three
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Speaker 1: sixty spin at the end of it and held my
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Speaker 1: hands up like a gymnast, like a dance gym katta gymnast,
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Speaker 1: and the club really liked the new routine that I
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Speaker 1: just made up on the spot and my pose at
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Speaker 1: the end because he posed, and I was like, I
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Speaker 1: guess you pose at the end of these And the
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Speaker 1: club loved it, and they exploded even louder, and all
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Speaker 1: of my teacher friends and our girlfriends are all screaming
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Speaker 1: from the sidelines with everybody else in the club. Oh,
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Speaker 1: the club has moved back. By the way, we have
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Speaker 1: the dance floor like eighty percent to ourselves, and everyone
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Speaker 1: else is crowded into this ring in the last twenty
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Speaker 1: percent of the dance floor, but we have a whole
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Speaker 1: bunch of space, so we're both using all of that
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Speaker 1: space kind of like moving around and dancing and weaving.
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Speaker 1: But I'm like, Okay, that was the coolest thing I've
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Speaker 1: ever done. I can't dance better than that. I have
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Speaker 1: nothing more. I can't like spin twice around instead of one.
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Speaker 1: I couldn't add more to the foot sequence. I didn't
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Speaker 1: even know how I was retaining all of this in
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Speaker 1: the first place, but I had like Dance Dance Revolution
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Speaker 1: brain on, and I remembered all of the sixteen steps
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Speaker 1: for that dance contest. My brain was like, look, this
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Speaker 1: is the most important thing that's ever happened in your life.
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Speaker 1: So we're gonna just use one hundred percent brain on
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Speaker 1: this dance contest. But I couldn't come up with something
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Speaker 1: cooler than what I had just done. I was like, well,
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Speaker 1: let's get something cool brain, and Brain was like, no, man,
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Speaker 1: we're we're at our limit. Remember how you never danced
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Speaker 1: before in your whole life, and we've never thought of
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Speaker 1: dancing before where you don't have anything left after this.
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Speaker 1: So then Ninja Robot suddenly like springs into the super
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Speaker 1: cool movement that I can barely even comprehend. He's moving
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Speaker 1: faster than the eye can see. He's a total badass,
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Speaker 1: and I'm clapping and laughing and having a great time
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Speaker 1: because this is amazing, Like he's stepping up to my
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Speaker 1: routine and just like, Okay, this guy is way better
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Speaker 1: than me. He starts breaking throwing out a few breakdance moves.
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Speaker 1: But then it hits me that I can do this.
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Speaker 1: If I can pull off one thing, then I can
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Speaker 1: actually win an impromptu Beijing dance contest. Now, if I
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Speaker 1: could just pre empt the next me than him the
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Speaker 1: next round and just try and end the whole contest
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Speaker 1: right there with one move. That was the craziest thing.
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Speaker 1: Anybody had ever seen like five steps above what we
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Speaker 1: had done. Then he wouldn't go for the third round.
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Speaker 1: The crowd would be so much louder that I could
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Speaker 1: just be like, oh, yeah, it's over now, because if
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Speaker 1: we went again, I would do something similar to what
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Speaker 1: I had done the last time, and then he would
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Speaker 1: do something like a step above and it would be clear.
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Speaker 1: People would be like, all right, well, the souper Topobo
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Speaker 1: was good for a while, but this guy actually knows
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Speaker 1: how to dance and can just keep doing this forever.
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Speaker 1: So this was my trick. I knew that I was
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Speaker 1: never going to be in another dance contest in my life,
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Speaker 1: and that my legs would never work again the way
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Speaker 1: they were working this night, this freakish night, when the
12:31
Speaker 1: dozen drinks I was under the influence of and the
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Speaker 1: music playing at that exact time, and the spirit of
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Speaker 1: challenge that had overtaken my body like a phantom dance maniac. Okay,
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Speaker 1: And I have to set this up that I was
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Speaker 1: a gymnast in like middle school, and I had this
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Speaker 1: one move that I liked to do whenever we had
12:54
Speaker 1: to do push ups or whatever. I would jump up
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Speaker 1: in the air and land on both of my hands
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Speaker 1: and then in slow motion lower my body down, like
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Speaker 1: my chest down to the ground in like slow motion,
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Speaker 1: and that was the only thing. My brain was like,
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Speaker 1: that's dancy, and so it came up with a plan,
13:13
Speaker 1: and this is what happened. I knew if we did
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Speaker 1: another round, he was going to win. So this was
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Speaker 1: my move to end the contest with me as the victor.
13:26
Speaker 1: I go through the routine again. I do the same
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Speaker 1: second routine that I did that the crowd really liked.
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Speaker 1: And then at the end of that, I just did
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Speaker 1: it once and then jumped up into the air so
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Speaker 1: that my body was like parallel to the dance floor
13:42
Speaker 1: ground also known as the dance floor, and landed on
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Speaker 1: my hands and slow motioned myself down for a couple
13:51
Speaker 1: seconds with my body up in the air and just
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Speaker 1: slow motion down. And then right when my chest started
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Speaker 1: to hit the ground, I rolled my body from the
14:02
Speaker 1: chest to my feet and rolled my chest up while
14:05
Speaker 1: the rest of my body was rolling down and I
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Speaker 1: was doing the worm, a move that I have never
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Speaker 1: done before, but executed flawlessly in this moment text book
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Speaker 1: perfect Yin and yang sign wave worm time. And because
14:19
Speaker 1: my body did it once that first time, correctly, I
14:23
Speaker 1: could do it again. So I did a huge worm,
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Speaker 1: like a tsunami worm, like five or six times, and
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Speaker 1: everyone was shocked the first couple times that happened, and
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Speaker 1: by like the third or fourth time, people were screaming
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Speaker 1: and taking pictures, and every single person in the club,
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Speaker 1: the DJ actually with the exception of robot Ninja, who
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Speaker 1: was like crossing his arms and just observing me like
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Speaker 1: a badass. But everybody else is screaming with like shock
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Speaker 1: and glee and cheering, and look at this crazy foreign
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Speaker 1: earth that just threw down with the sickest worm anyone
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Speaker 1: had ever seen. For a long time, I was doing
15:01
Speaker 1: like I still doing the worms. I just kept doing
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Speaker 1: the worm, and then I stood up after my wriggling cool,
15:08
Speaker 1: I pushed myself up or leapt I did some move
15:12
Speaker 1: so that I was on my feet again all of
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Speaker 1: a sudden in front of robot Ninja, and just like
15:16
Speaker 1: locked eyes with the bro and robot Ninja like you
15:20
Speaker 1: could just see in his face he knew what just happened.
15:23
Speaker 1: And the whole crowd is still screaming and cheering still,
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Speaker 1: and robot Ninja with his arms crossed and his chin
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Speaker 1: tucked down, finally lifts his head up from his chest
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Speaker 1: kind of up, nods at me, smiles, and then walks
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Speaker 1: back into the crowd with everybody else. And I am
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Speaker 1: standing in the middle of this dance club floor crowd
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Speaker 1: as the dance champion, the impromptu dance champion, and everybody
15:51
Speaker 1: is screaming and clapping and cheering, and it's over, and
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Speaker 1: it's I did it. I want I can't believe everything
15:59
Speaker 1: just happened so crazy. The teachers from my school are
16:02
Speaker 1: going fucking nuts. They are all they losing their minds,
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Speaker 1: like scream cheering, losing their minds. And my mind is
16:12
Speaker 1: just spinning at what just happened. And it sounds fucking crazy,
16:16
Speaker 1: But that is what happened that night, and you can
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Speaker 1: see why I remember. It is one of the craziest
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Speaker 1: things I have ever been involved in, and completely unique
16:29
Speaker 1: and singular within my life. I do not see another
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Speaker 1: dance contest popping up anytime in the next half century,
16:36
Speaker 1: and certainly not me winning one again. So right after
16:39
Speaker 1: Robot Ninja leaves, like Louis Vatan Ninja shows up and
16:44
Speaker 1: he like pushes his way sexily out of the crowd
16:48
Speaker 1: and struts up dancing in front of me, and then
16:51
Speaker 1: he starts to do a move, but the whole club
16:54
Speaker 1: was like, no, okay, that's you know, like one dance
16:57
Speaker 1: contest that we actually cleared the floor for him, gave
17:00
Speaker 1: time to like, that's enough for one night, and everyone
17:03
Speaker 1: kind of like shouted at him and sort of pulled
17:06
Speaker 1: him back once he took a step back and stopped
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Speaker 1: the next dance contest from starting up, which thank god
17:12
Speaker 1: because after the worm, my legs were like, hey, man,
17:15
Speaker 1: that's all you get. Now, it's all done. You know
17:18
Speaker 1: that right? And I was like, yes, I completely understand this, body,
17:22
Speaker 1: thank you for telling me that. Body, I get it,
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Speaker 1: Like we're good. And body was like, okay, good, let's
17:28
Speaker 1: go get a beer. And I think Louis Vatan ninja. Anyway.
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Speaker 1: I gave a whole bunch of high fives and thumbs
17:34
Speaker 1: and handshakes out to everybody in the crowd who came
17:37
Speaker 1: back onto the dance floor, and then the crowd kind of,
17:40
Speaker 1: you know, came together again into a regular dance crowd.
17:43
Speaker 1: The next song started up, I decided to get three
17:46
Speaker 1: more mohetos or whatever and just melted back into that
17:50
Speaker 1: witching hour dance club so that is the time I
17:55
Speaker 1: won an impromptu dance contest in nightclub Central Beijing. Thank
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Speaker 1: you for listening. I don't tell that story as often
18:05
Speaker 1: as I tell the other stories because it's so surreal,
18:09
Speaker 1: but it happened, and I'm so glad I got to
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Speaker 1: tell it here and that it'll be preserved on this
18:15
Speaker 1: podcast because it's so crazy. I forget about it a
18:19
Speaker 1: lot of the time that had happened, and then I
18:22
Speaker 1: remembered it the other week and was like, Oh, that
18:24
Speaker 1: has to be on. That has to be a story.
18:27
Speaker 1: That has to be one of the stories I tell.
18:30
Speaker 1: Thank you again for listening, and if you have any
18:32
Speaker 1: kind of dance story, I'm very eager to hear it.
18:35
Speaker 1: Let me know a bit of a rambler at gmail
18:38
Speaker 1: dot com or any of the socials. I'm on all
18:41
Speaker 1: of those, and if you tell me a dance story,
18:43
Speaker 1: it'll probably get mentioned in the one of the ramble
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Speaker 1: On episodes. Have a great rest of your day and
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Speaker 1: I will talk to you on the next one.